Join us for Subtle Technologies – In Water Colours, an art and science cruise over our glistening lake on board the classic HMS Pioneer Princess. Highlights include a recital by Gordon Monahan on his new instrument, the “Sauerkraut Synthesizer” and Zev Asher performing a documentary film starring his body. The voyage will be the vessel for a program of video and sound art chosen to reflect concerns for the water in and below us. Come and party with us as we rock the boat with the sparkling Toronto skyline as backdrop.

Our ship will float the abundant waters. The pollution of the Great Lakes is a sustained effect of 20th century industry’s disregard for ecology. Life goes on. In the water; microbial processes are in constant negotiation in diffidence to human notions of use and sustenance. The artists in this program have tapped into processes that water serves as host to. If our bodies are mostly water then what is not must adjust to maintain its buoyancy.

Gordon Monahan‘s works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance. Monahan began performing in public as a member of various rock bands in Ottawa, Canada. He has performed and exhibited around the world at venues including the Venice Bienale. John Cage once said, “At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven’t heard before.” Monahan’s interest in ‘hi- and low-tech’ and ‘high and low culture’ led him to collaborate with Laura Kikauka and Bastiaan Maris in establishing The Glowing Pickle, an electronic surplus store using 20 tons of discarded East German scientific equipment, parodying both communist and capitalist cultures.

Zev Asher is a Montreal-born film-maker and musician. His work combines experimental methodologies with documentary strategies. Widely screened, some his videos include What About Me: The Rise of the Nihilist Spasm Band, Casuistry; The Art Of Killing A Cat, a documentary on an infamous assassination of a cat by art students, an exploration of the limits of art. His first documentary, RAT ART: Croatian Independents examines the Yugoslav civil war on Croatian artists. Asher has performed extensively in North America, Europe and Japan with the savant-rock band Nimrod and improvisational multi media project, Roughage.